Aaron M. Glazer & Zoe Fraade-Blanar

Over the last two decades, fans—superfans—have moved from a fringe, outsider activity to one of the major economic forces driving modern business. Consumers buy products. But fans perform: creating content and community, evangelizing, and even making pilgrimages on behalf of your brand. They’re driven by feelings of nostalgia, identity, insidership, authenticity, and ownership. As such, they demand more from celebrities and companies than ever before. Brands that properly cultivate this two-way relationship can expect incredible returns (and those that don’t, well, don’t last very long).

In this keynote, Superfandom authors Aaron M. Glazer and Zoe Fraade-Blanar offer a business-minded survey of the modern rise of fandom, including case studies of brands that got it right, and those that got it wrong. As with all relationships, balance is key. Fans can be your most valuable asset for context and direction, but they can never take the place of solid business strategy. Winning engagement isn’t about giving fans what they want, but what they need—and with Glazer and Fraade-Blanar, your team can navigate this nuanced, give-and-take balance with unerring poise. 

‘Big’ questions of human existence (Where do I belong? How do I find a mate? How can I be happy?) aren’t going away. But traditional tribal institutions—the organizations humans have turned to for comfort and answers such as religion, state, home-town, and family—while still important, are now understood to be fallible. So where do people go today to find a sense of community, and identity? In this talk, Aaron M. Glazer and Zoe Fraade-Blanar argue that the answer can be found in the pop mythologies and fan cultures around modern brands. Fans wear their identities on their sleeves (sometimes quite literally)—and are as likely to turn to Doctor Who or Game of Thrones as they are to organized religion. How do these mobile, educated, digitally connected people find what they love—then dive in? How do they find meaning and validation through brand-based narratives, beloved characters, and devoted community? And what does it all say about who we are—as consumers, viewers, readers, and meaning-makers? Forget geekiness and hysteria, outliers and the fringe—it’s time to understand superfans for what, and who, they really are. Us.